


Freefall

by penumbra (perihadion)



Category: Smallville
Genre: Abandoned Work - Unfinished and Discontinued, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon Divergence - Post-S6, F/M, Miscarriage, POV First Person, POV Lana
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2007-06-10
Updated: 2007-10-03
Packaged: 2021-02-27 04:22:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 9,753
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22390960
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/perihadion/pseuds/penumbra
Summary: You might not want to find yourself, but in the end you have no choice.
Relationships: Lana Lang/Oliver Queen, Past Lana Lang/Lex Luthor, past Clark Kent/Lana Lang
Kudos: 1





	1. Prologue

This is _my_ story.

Looking back, I understand it took me years to see what every child learns in school: there is no friction in space. For years I was spiralling helplessly out there, waiting for a passing meteoroid to catch me in its gravity well and pull me along.

It was Clark, of course it was Clark. He sped past me as I floundered in the cosmos and trapped me in orbit around him, and I stayed there. I know now that it wasn't all his fault: I didn't put my heart into breaking away. I made all my attempts to reach escape velocity in the equivalent of a horse and cart, and I was barely surprised when I failed. The Moon exerts the same gravitational force on the Earth as the Earth does on her: it was the same with Clark and me.

Even as I made my getaway, I was thinking about running back to him.

Chloe had friends in high places. I told her I had to escape — from Lex — and she told me I could fake my own death. It didn't surprise me really. What did surprise me was who her friends were.

I don't know why they agreed to help me. I just accepted it then — expected it, even. And I thought I could manipulate the plan all by myself and come out on top this time. I thought I had to. I saw everything I knew teetering at the edge of the world, degrees away from having or losing everything I wanted: in reality I was bordering escape velocity, my acceleration a line, a fine line I was treading between falling back into orbit or shooting off into outer space and all the freedom and uncertainty that came with it.

And there was uncertainty. But it was mine.


	2. Escape

It all hinged on split-second timing.

The moment I swung the door open, the van had to flash past, moving at a constant velocity — not accelerating, not decelerating or slowing or stopping. It had to look real. That was why I had to know: it was the only way they could do it.

If you have ever been struck by lightning, you may know what it felt like: an experience too large for the moment that contained it, exploding out and gone in a flash but burning in my memory until the end of my life. I knew it was going to happen, but there was no way I could prepare for what it felt like, or how familiar it was to me — waking up memories half-faded of a jerk, and a flash of colour, a sudden stop and then stillness.

That's the only way I can described being yanked into the van by Bart Allen. He went by Impulse then, but became better know as the Flash in later years — the fastest man alive.

The van accelerated once we were in it and the door banged shut behind us. I didn't even hear the explosion as we sped away from Smallville, and everything I knew. All my senses were dulled: I don't know if the numbness came from nervousness or anticipation — either way, the hardest part was over as far as I knew. All I had to do was wait for the pieces to fall into place.

Bart was grinning over at me in the darkness, his hood down and his hair ruffled.

"You okay?"

It came from the driver's seat, and a pair of brown eyes I could see glance over at me in the rear-view mirror: Oliver Queen. I had only met him once or twice. I hadn't thought much of him at the time — after all, he hated my husband.

That was before everything I found out about Lex, and now that Oliver was stripped of my pre-conceptions he was mysterious to me, and that made me nervous. All I knew was that he was Lois's ex-boyfriend, and the Green Arrow, and that he never told her.

The fact that he was saving my life never even occured to me. I just nodded, and sat very still and quiet, breathing out and wishing that this part was over.

The only one I knew was Victor, smiling sympathetically over his shoulder at me from his seat next to Oliver. I grasped onto that one piece of familiar kindness. Bart was a kid, an overconfident kid, and AC was another one with a secret he kept from his girlfriends. But he wasn't there anyway.

"AC's got a problem with a prolonged deficit of water. We'll catch up with him later." Oliver again, looking at me through the rearview mirror like he read my mind.

Victor chuckled, "Yeah, we thought the portable swimming pool was a little too conspicuous."

I just nodded. In retrospect, I should have laughed: things might have been easier if I hadn't taken myself so seriously. I must have been so transparent, but I never saw myself that way. I felt like a fish out of water — you might have thought I would sympathise with AC.

We drove on in an awkward silence, Oliver casting that look of appraisal at me in the mirror at intervals: I felt like he was judging me. Victor tried baiting me with conversation, but I let it become clear that I wanted to sit quiet, and keep this time to myself, and wish it was over.

Bart's feet got itchy after a while, and Oliver pulled over to let him out so he could run ahead and back, ahead and back, ahead and back, and burn off his excess energy.

We stopped after an hour or so. I had to stay in the van, because we were still in Kansas, and my face would be all over the news. I wanted to get out: my legs weren't cramping, but the atmosphere in the van was stifling. I kept telling myself it would only be a while, just a little while, and eventually I could go back to Smallville.

Oliver brought me a burger.

I took it with a mumbled "thanks" and just picked at it. It had been a long time since I had eaten anything so greasy, or unhealthy — and that was partly to do with Lex.

I shuffled back into the corner reactively when Oliver sat down on the floor by me, leaning his head against the inner wall of the van and stretching his long legs out. He looked at me, like a teacher who knows that his student was keeping the kind of secrets that needed to be shared. Well, I felt like I had a right to my secrets, and Oliver of all people had no right to ask.

"You sure you're okay?" he asked, softly.

I nodded again, looking down at the burger in my hands.

"It's just," he said, "you seem a little quiet." The last word had a subtle edge, and I had an idea what he meant — too quiet considering the things that have changed. I think it was then I decided to be suspicious of him.

"I'm fine."

I looked up at him through my hair, a dark, heavy look. It was a moment, but when the moment passed, he nodded.

"Okay," he said. "We'll be stopping here for another few minutes to catch up on the news and then heading out again."

I didn't care: I just wanted him to leave. I didn't realise the news could be important to him — that they were at war, and there was a cause they were bleeding for. I didn't think there was a verdict to be given, a verdict on the culmination of their efforts.

Right then, I didn't think that there were more important things in the world than me, and what I had tried to build — whether things had gone to plan, whether the Luthors were dead.

He gave me one more look, a parting shot, and then stepped out of the van.

A few minutes later he sat back in the driver's seat and flipped on the radio. Victor took the passenger seat, and Bart, back now, sat next to me in the back of the van.

I'm ashamed of this now, but then I didn't even hear the news about the dam. I tuned it out. All I heard was that I had died in an explosion, Lex had been arrested on suspicion of my death, and no news of Lionel — and my world shattered.

When I formulated my secret part of the plan, I think that was my lowest moment.

I had tried to manipulate the people in my life before and failed — I don't know why I thought it would be different this time. It was because I was desperate, because things were all falling to pieces around me, and I had to do something. And, the things that were done to me had been so horrible that even now, in the most unlit hollows of my soul I feel justified in what I did.

If nothing else, it propelled me to escape velocity.

I had hoped that if I gave Clark just enough information about Lionel's part in my marriage to Lex, he would kill him. I thought he would kill them both if I died, and then I could come back — safe from redress — and he would forgive me.

And if he didn't, at least I would be free.

I was so naïve. I didn't know then that I would have time to think about what I nearly did to Clark, and that it would burn a hole in my heart.

I should have listened to the other news.

Oliver got out of the van and slammed the door behind him. I didn't understand why he would react like that when, from his point of view, everything had gone to plan. I looked warily at Bart and Victor. They exchanged a careful glance, and then Victor got out.

I caught Bart's eye now for the first time. He was tapping his hands against his legs and gave me a twitchy smile before looking away again.

He caught my eye again after a moment. I must have looked confused, I know I felt it, because he frowned slightly, and then said, with the fake nonchalance of a euphemising parent, "I guess the boss is just worried about Lois."

That was punctuated by a metallic bang against the outside of the van. In my mind's eye I could see Oliver ball his fist against his teeth, and Victor talking him down outside.

"Why?" I asked.

The tentative smile fell off Bart's face at this, and his forehead creased. "Didn't you listen to the radio?" he said, "All hell's broken loose in Smallville — why wouldn't he be worried?"

I had heard the radio, but I didn't listen, and that was how I found out that my hometown was once again in danger — the confused recap from a kid with a secret.

I closed my eyes as it sunk in. Things might not be OK.

Oliver got in again, slamming the door behind him and turning the key in the ignition, and Victor jumped in the passenger seat again.

"AC'll be halfway there by now," he said, as Oliver pulled away, "and it's nothing the Boy Scout can't handle on his own."

Oliver was silent for a moment, but you could almost hear him roll his eyes. After a moment, he said "It's fine."

I realised then that there was a disconnect between Oliver, the Green Arrow, and Oliver the person. I was amazed at the disparity between him and Clark, the difference between their abilities to set their feelings aside. And, if I hadn't known, I would have thought that Oliver was Cyborg.

"Boy Scout..." I said, looking at the back of Oliver's head, "do you mean Clark?"

He just shook his head slowly from side to side, maybe in disbelief, or denial, but Victor smiled at me over his shoulder.

"You see?" he said to Oliver, but Oliver shook his head again.

"She knows." he said, "Doesn't mean he told her."

Victor opened his mouth to respond but Bart interjected. "Amigos," he said, "we've been over this. We had to tell her because nobody trusts us yet, comprende? 'Sides," he added with a shrug, "Chloe said it was cool."

"Right." said Victor, "And Clark clearly trusts her."

They were debating retroactively whether to let me in on their secret identities. Like I said, my escape had hinged on timing — I had to know that Bart was going to grab me. It seemed that Oliver had been outvoted on this point. I stared at the back of his head, and then at the rearview mirror, but he wasn't watching me.

"Look," I said, throatily, "if you're expecting Clark to clean this mess up —"

I told myself the plan had always been about Clark's protection. I don't know if it was justification, or a self-defence against the guilt, but I never thought it was enough for me to just leave town. I had to make sure that Lex and Lionel were both eradicated altogether — I never even thought what I would do then.

Would I have Clark kill everyone who posed even the slightest threat to him? Would I destroy the whole world to keep him safe?

I was more a Luthor then than I realised.

"Knowing Clark," said Oliver, icily, "he probably caused this mess in the first place."

"Just who do you think you are?" I said; I tried to keep my voice steady. "You think you can judge Clark? Judge me?"

Oliver shook his head and then swung the steering wheel around. I grabbed the seat as we braked sharply by the side of the road and Oliver leaned around the seat to look me, fiery, in the eye.

"Listen," he said sharply, "I didn't ask to babysit you. I'm doing this as a favour to Chloe, because it's the right thing to do and because I felt sorry for you." He paused, letting that last remark hang in the air painfully. I breathed in: the air burned with faint indignation against my lungs. I think Bart and Victor were staring at Oliver.

"Now it just so happens," he added, "that a major catastrophe is taking place as we speak, and we can't go back to help out because we're looking after you. I don't have to be happy about this," he said, "and I'm not, but I'm gonna follow through. You can make this easy for me, and we can get it done with and go back and help Clark, or you can make it hard."

It was the story of my life and I didn't even know it: people putting aside the things they were supposed to be doing to protect me, when I didn't ask, and sometimes, although maybe not in this case, when I didn't even need it.

And what could I do when he put it that way? I didn't like him, but I wasn't about to suggest that they abandon me, and there was nothing else we could do. So, I looked at him with my nodded, "Fine."

There was a moment's silence with only the sound of the engine as Oliver got us back onto the road. After a beat, Bart ventured, "I could go."

"No," said Oliver. "We might need you," and, with a glance back at me in the rearview mirror, "it's a long way to Star City."


	3. Sheltered

So, it was Star City.

It was hard for me to come to terms with the idea that my plan had failed. You might think that I should have been practised at that, but you need to understand that the very thing my plan had depended on was the thing that wrecked most of my other attempts to control my own life — people's need to protect me.

There was one phrase in my mind, over and over: I may never see Smallville again.

I was trying to absorb it, to make the knowledge a part of me, but it just rested on the skin of my mind like the expensive make-up I had left in Smallville — part of the person I presented to others, but something that I would ultimately wash off in private.

When I was younger I used to long to leave Smallville. It felt like a lifetime ago, just a few short years, and another me. In a way it was: somebody precious and hopeful, but naïve in a way I don't think I'll ever recapture.

She slipped away quietly one day, and the rest of me never saw her again. I like to think she saw the world, and maybe Peter Pan whisked her away to a land where she'll never die. The alternative is that she already did, cold and alone in Smallville, and I never even noticed.

Either way, I was finally leaving Smallville, on a journey to the stars — or, at least, Star City — but I wasn't a teenager anymore and I just wanted to go home.

Oliver wouldn't let Bart out of the van anymore. I understood that. Looking back, being confined must have been harder for him than the rest of us: he had the whole world at his feet, and he was full of energy. At the time, I just found his fidgeting distractng: it just reinforced the image I had of him as a small child, and I was just waiting for him to ask if we were there yet.

The others were more willing to accommodate him. Oliver abandoned his own stoic silence to talk, partly to take Bart's mind off the confinement — partly because, I knew, he was worried about Lois.

The radio was still on, but there was no more news.

Eventually he exchanged a weighted look with Victor and addressed me: "I've organised a small apartment for you in Star City, Lana." I nodded. I didn't want to think about anything quite as palpable as living arrangements. Part of me still clung to the hope that I could go back. "It's just outside Orchid Bay," he continued, as though I knew where that was, "not big, but the view is nice — not far from Star Bridge."

"It's nice around there," said Victor, "they light the bridge up at night so it glows." I had seen pictures of Star Bridge at night before, and I had to agree it was beautiful. You could see the stars on top reflected in the water with the real stars in the sky, and despite the overwhelming despair that was setting into my soul, a little part of me was glowing excitement to see it in person. I think that was their intention, and although my reaction at the time was resentment for being pulled out of myself, now I feel grateful.

"Lot of artists in Star City," said Oliver, his eyes flicking up to look at me in the rearview mirror, and then down to the road again. "There's a lot to see there."

"You studied art, right?" asked Victor, looking over his shoulder at me in encouragement. I think it was here that I realised what they were doing, that they were doing the same for me as they had done for Bart — but there comes a point for anyone when dealing with a seismic shift by being quiet and sad becomes wearing. I didn't have the energy to resist their efforts anymore, so I nodded.

"In Paris," I added. Paris. I had tried to escape Smallville once — in the end I might as well have stayed in Smallville all along. It was a while before I managed to disconnect my memories from eachother, so that I could appreciated my time in Paris for itself, untainted by everything that happened as a result. However sinister the undertones were, that was one of the happiest times of my life, and just sometimes the illusion of freedom is enough, if you can't have the real thing.

Oliver let Victor take the wheel after a while, and came to sit alone with me in the back, Bart in the passenger seat. We didn't talk, but he watched me through the darkness. I said that I felt he was judging me, and now I think that he was trying to work out what it was that Clark saw in me. I later heard from AC that when Lois told Oliver about her friend 'Smallville' he had thought there was something there. Maybe it was a surprise for him to find that almost the first thing Clark had done when Oliver left was come after Lex Luthor's wife.

It was another of those things I took for granted at the time, but now something I wondered about myself — what need of Clark's did I fulfill that he loved me so desperately? And Lex? Do you ever understand why people love you?

When it got late, we stopped at a motel halfway through Colorado. Out of Kansas, there was less chance of being recognised, but Oliver still insisted on taking precautions.

A pair of glasses? I thought he was kidding — but it worked. I still smile at that now, knowing what I know.

I shared my room with AC, who showed up during the middle of the night with a status report on Smallville. Lois had been with Chloe in the dam when it collapsed, and apparently Clark had got them out. Chloe caused us all the real pain. AC said she was still unconscious, with Lois ashen-faced by her side.

Chloe and I hadn't always seen eye-to-eye, but I owed her for this, and she was my friend, and it felt like one more piece of my world had turned to dust. And this time even I could see I had a choice between going back to Smallville to be with her and proving myself alive, and running off to Star City where I would be safer. I'd like to say I struggled with it, but there was never any real doubt that I would go to Star City: I valued my own safety more than any of the reasons I had for going back, even Clark.

"You couldn't do anything, anyway," people would say to me later, but it doesn't make me feel better about myself.

"How's the Boy Scout?" Oliver asked after a moment, cutting through the thickness in the room as though he'd decided we had grieved long enough.

"Got his hands full," said AC, crossing his arms and glancing over at me, "he's probably at the hospital by now, though." He paused, "I think he's gonna try to talk Lois into going home."

Oliver raised an eyebrow, and then said, "I wish him luck." He looked quite pensive for a moment, and then added, "And I value the sentiment. It's late."

He swept one of those meaningful looks over us, and then turned and left the room. Victor smiled at me, and then gave AC a nod of acknowledgement, and some expression of non-verbal communication that I didn't entirely understand. Bart shuffled behind them, hands in his pockets.

AC and I were sharing a room. He put a large bottle of water on the nightstand by his bed. I'd laugh at that now: I might even try to make a joke about it. The whole situation was so surreal to me, like my life was being filmed through a filter, and everything was all blurred edges and oversaturation.

You probably know what it's like to share a room with somebody you barely know. That feeling of awkwardness, and over-intimacy with this person — the realisation that they are about to discover whether or not you snore, whether you talk in your sleep, whether you're prone to toss and tangle the sheets. It was this, rather than any of the thoughts about how fucked up everything was, which really filled my mind — like I were searching for some trivial problem to focus on, because I didn't know how to approach these other feelings bubbling in my stomach.

"You okay?" I nodded, pursed my lips, and sat down on my bed. AC sat down on his and looked at me with that half-smile that never really seems to fall off his face.

"It's just hard to... come to terms with," I said, "I guess."

He nodded, and looked down at his hands. "Yeah," he said, "I guess it can't help with everything that's happened back in Smallville, and Chloe." It was then that the thought came to me — one that, if I'd been slightly less focused on my own introspection, I might have considered earlier.

"Does Jimmy know?" I asked, "Does he know what's happened to Chloe?"

"Jimmy?" he asked, looking up at me in confusion. It was then that my heart fell in my chest: if AC didn't even know who Jimmy was, clearly Jimmy didn't know.

"He's Chloe's boyfriend," I said, feeling the muscles in my face tighten, "he works at the Daily Planet, he's Chloe's... boyfriend." For some reason, that was it: the thought that Chloe was alone back in Smallville, my best friend, and her boyfriend didn't even know. That was the thought that hurt the most. The irony, at that point, was completely lost on me.

"I'm sure Clark will tell him," AC said, frowning, and nodding in what I think was supposed to be a reassuring manner.

"No," I said, "no, he has to know. He has a right to know." I looked at AC, it must have been a watery look: all wide eyes and shining pupils. "Can't we call him?" I asked desperately, "Can't we send Bart?"

"Whoa," he said, "no, not a good idea." Then he added, in an undertone that was more to himself, "In more ways than one." It was a long time before I understood what that meant. I must have been blind: maybe I really did need the glasses. Maybe I was too wrapped up in my own feelings at the time to recognise and interpret the dynamics in people around me, I don't know. AC was looking at me intensely, as though waiting for what I was about to say next. I think he was trying to handle the situation carefully — anybody who has ever met him would know that delicacy is not one of his many talents, it makes me wonder now why they left him with me.

"We have to," I said, "we have to, he has a right to know."

In retrospect, it may have been less about preserving Jimmy's feelings than my intense need to project myself onto everybody and every situation. Everything that had happened in the past few hours felt like a heavy black weight against my chest, crushing down on my ribcage and making it hard for me to breathe. I had to feel like I could do something, to help myself, to help some proxy of myself, to help Chloe.

That, and there was something else.

"Like Clark has a right to know you're still alive?" He said it quickly — and when I looked at him his eyes and mouth widened as though he hadn't meant to say it at all. There was a kind of stillness, a solid silence, a silence that you could feel hanging in the air and draped all around you. I could feel the blood drain from my face, my eyes wide.

"That's different." I said. My voice came out as a whisper. He nodded assent, clenching his jaw, but I could see that his eyes disagreed with me.

Like Lois had a right to know about you? Or Oliver? I might have said, if I hadn't been so tired.

"I hardly know him," I said. Then my face finally crumpled, the tears stinging at my eyes.

My best friend's boyfriend, and I had only met him once or twice. He'd had a hand in saving my life almost as many times.

"I'm sure you had stuff going on," he said, but he sounded almost as though he himself didn't really believe what he was saying. So, I nodded, and turned over in bed so that I lay facing the wall, and a few minutes later he turned the lights off. And if AC told the others that I cried myself to sleep that night, I never heard about it.

We set off fairly early the next day, a couple of hours after the Sun came up. Oliver insisted the entire team accompany me to Star City in the van: it was unlikely that anybody in California would recognise me, he said, but until we got there he was determined to take every precaution.

That meant three of us stuffed in the back of the van with innumerable bottles of water in the sweltering heat. AC and Bart probably suffered the worst — I think it was easier for me to realise the solidity of this fact when I was sitting in evidence measured by the litre. We only stopped a few times: to change drivers, meals and bathroom breaks. I fell asleep again in the afternoon, I must have been tired. It's strange to think now that I went quietly from being waited on in the Luthor mansion to sharing rooms with surfers and napping in the backs of vans, but that was the least of my concerns.

Victor shook me awake gently during the middle of the night as we were coming up to the outskirts of Star City.

I have never forgotten the feeling as we approached the city where I was to stay. Oliver let me sit up front in the passenger seat for the first time since we left Smallville and the air was cool and clean-smelling around me. The sky was dotted with stars and the hanging crescent moon and, nomatter how badly I wanted to be back "home" for any reason, I couldn't help but take a breath which filled my veins.

And smile.


	4. Starstruck

The first person I met in Star City was Matthew. I had stood in my breathless apartment the night we arrived, finally alone — wasn't that what I had wanted? It was hard to tell whether the feeling of emptiness came from the apartment or within me: the void seemed to stagnate either side of my skin like water separated only by wire netting.

It was the camera that broke me: the camera in the kitchen with my face flashed pale across the lens, left with a note telling me to see the sights and reminding me forcefully of poor Jimmy: poor, sweet, enthusiastic Jimmy on a photojournalism assignment while his girlfriend lay comatose back in Smallville. And when the tears coalesced in my eyes I just blinked them back, because it seemed such a useless thing to do when there was nobody to see me. So I went to bed. I had to, to escape the thoughts in my head which beat against the inside of my skull. And when I woke up the next morning, and after I had finished languishing in my bed, unwilling to get up, I went out with the camera, because I had to escape the crushing weight of emptiness in there: to go out into air which was saturated with sunlight, air which could counter-balance the pressure inside my skull.

There was a contrast between the Star Bridge I had seen lit up in photographs and which we had driven past the night before and the Star Bridge I visited that day. It was Metropolitan in the daylight, not magical: gleaming metallic against the sky and humming with the traffic. I put up my camera, pushing back the thought that somewhere one James Olsen might be doing the same, and took a shot of the bridge. It was looking up from the screen on the back of the camera and the preview of my shot that I caught Matthew's eye, his own camera in his hands and an ideosyncratic smile on his face. It turned out he was hoping to study photography in the city, as he explained when he came over to help me with my composition.

It was a strange feeling: I was still married to Lex and ostensibly in love with Clark, but I let the first person I met in Star City push all that into the back of my mind, and tell me things I learned in my art class, and flirt with me like there was nothing else going on. And I noticed how his smile was warm and genuine, and his eyes framed by thick, attractive lashes. I liked to pretend I never noticed those things about Clark, but I always noticed those things about boys.

"So Lana," he began later, because I had upheld my image and been unforthcoming, "what brings you to Star City?" I remember smiling and looking away to the side. You know, I had had so much practice at being evasive, and somehow I was still bad at it. Maybe deliberately — I think being bad at being evasive was another one of those things I did more when there was someone I wanted to witness it.

"I... couldn't stay where I was," I said, eventually, and he nodded along like he understood.

"I know how that feels," he said.

I think I smiled, just a little bit mysterious — how could he possibly know how it had felt for me? But he was sweet, and I didn't resent the conversation turning to him. "You're not from California," I said, and he nodded again.

"No," he said, his lips turning up in a strange half smile, "I actually grew up mostly in Toronto — but I guess you wouldn't tell, I picked up a lot of accent when we moved to Idaho. You know, Lewiston."

"Oh, you're Canadian," I remember saying. "Yeah, there are a few Canadians back where I hail from."

He grinned, and reached up to ruffle his hair slightly as he stretched in his seat. Sunlight fell at an angle through the trees in the park and across the picnic table we were sitting at and shone around his head like a halo. "And where do you come from, Lana?" he asked, and looked me straight in the eye with that smile. I couldn't help myself smiling back, maybe wider than I had in months. Looking back, I realise this was the first time in a while that I had just had a conversation with anybody, including the people I supposed were my friends. It was like for once I was realising what life was for. And I don't know if it was selfish that I forgot Jimmy and Chloe and everyone else for those few hours, but I think it was necessary.

So, I smiled and shook my head coyly, and then said, "I'm from a small town in Kansas."

He smiled, and then said, "Doesn't seem like the kind of place you'd run into a lot of Canadians."

I remember looking down at my hands then, and my own smile feeling so much more wistful, and then saying, "Well things aren't always what you'd expect." And it was probably the truest thing I had said in weeks.

"No," he said, how voice lower now, and a slight breeze picked up, "I suppose not. Well," and he was grinning again now at me, "it produced you. So perhaps it's a very unusual small town." I laughed at that. Smallville was a very unusual small town, and I suppose I liked to think I was an unusual person — but then, who doesn't like to think that about themself? Growing up in Smallville, I think most people are unusual.

He walked me home late in the evening, and the apartment felt so much cooler and quieter by contrast. I remember trying to push all thoughts of Smallville out of my mind — that I couldn't go back, what was happening to Chloe. Somehow it seemed more selfish when it was effortless: that was a mixture of feeling I didn't understand. I have ideas about how I was feeling now — but it's not true, what they say about hindsight: memories fade and curl at the edges, and the surer you are that you have it right, the more likely you are to be wrong. I am sure I understood that even then.

So, I fell in with Matthew and spent most of the summer with him and friends he had made around the city. He was an easy enough person to waste time with, and I could see how he amassed casual acquaintances. I found myself in larger groups of people than I ever had been in before, even when I was a teenager and cheerleader. They were somewhere on the opposite spectrum of friendship from those I had left behind: friends not solely for leaning on and divulging secret fears, but just for having fun. Matthew would catch my eye when I was grinning wildly at somebody like Karin, and smile back at me like he understand I was letting myself go in a way I hadn't done for years.

I also found an eye for composition, and was convinced to enrol at a local art college in photography. Time was swirling fast around me, glorious and on fire: burning with all the smiles and the sunshine that for once I let myself have, and I felt looser, freer in myself and less determined to keep up what I know was the façade. But when night was cold and heavy I would lie in my bed and think about Smallville — I would force myself to think about Clark.

The boys called me from time to time, Oliver most of all. Through the uneasiness I had felt around him had emerged an easy sort of "working relationship", I still sometimes felt like I was being judged. It had transpired that Chloe was fine — and when he hung up on that call I choked for the first time on burning tears of relief. But he hardly talked about Clark, and even less about Lois, and the proxied grief I had felt for Jimmy was replaced by a worse sting of guilt that I still couldn't — or wouldn't — go back.

And, yes, I tried to date Matthew for a while, but it didn't really work out. We stayed close.

"Lana," he once said to me, "you use guys as a way of compensating for whatever deficiency you feel like you have," and then he ruffled his hair and brushed it out of his eyes, and gave me a rakish smile, and Karin looked at him like his mind was out to lunch, and then at me, and I didn't speak to him for the rest of the day. He didn't apologise straight away, or call me up to do it later. I mentioned this to him, and he said he wouldn't. I didn't really see him after that, and I still think it was out of line for him to say that to me unasked — but still it made me wonder.

I remember sitting there surrounded by the electric light of the television I wasn't really watching, and trying to decode his passive-aggressiveness, so familiar to me.

And then the phone rang, and it was Chloe.

"Hi, Lana," she said. Her voice was so far away and so familiar to me at the same time, and I felt a sudden rush of pain for all she had suffered since I left her — because I left her. "I'm sorry I didn't call sooner," she continued, "I've just... had a lot to deal with."

"It's okay," I breathed out in a rush, and realised I was smiling, and my vision was blurring, and my eyes were stinging.

"I just, wanted to know how you are, I guess," she said.

"Same," I said, and my voice was half laughing, shuddering under the rush of emotion at this one connection to my home town. I breathed, and then added, "I heard what happened, Chloe."

There was a moment of quiet on the other end of the line, and then she said, "Yeah. But I'm okay now." There was another pause, and I could hear her breathing, and then she said, "Um, so how are you?"

I told her what had been happening for me, but I left out the things I thought about at night: self-pitying schisms of the mind and musings on my feelings for Clark. I wasn't totally comfortable talking to her about the confusion I had about myself, but I told her anyway what Matthew had said to me. There was another pause on the other end of the line, and after a moment she just said, "I don't know." Was that really how people saw me?

I asked Oliver too the next time he called, and he gave me a much blunter answer, and then hung up. I actually cried after he did, although I didn't want to — and I don't know why it hurt more that Oliver would say something like that than Matthew, or Chloe. I knew he had been judging me all along, but this was the first time I heard what he had thought, and it caused such painful self-examination.

Victor's kindness in particular swam around me, the unbidden parallels I had seen in his relationship with Katherine and mine with Clark. You know, I later learned that they broke up.

Unlike, Matthew, Oliver did apologise for what he said to me later, and he changed his mind about me too. In the end, I think I changed my mind about myself — but long before I decided to leave Star City. Because Star City was beautiful, it really was, and I learnt a lot of things there — about art, about myself. I remembered how much I had yearned to leave Smallville when I was younger, and how that ambition had lost its momentum and eventually been buried in dust and cobwebs in a corner of my mind I never visited. And now I was out, and I could never go back — and I wasn't sure if that was OK, but I did find my wanderlust, and I had to follow my heart.

And so I left.


	5. Quiver

Travelling is the most important thing to me, now. When your setting changes you can tell, by what has stayed the same, who you are. That is why people go looking for themselves in other countries: because when you stay in one place, you don’t know how much is you and how much is your environment. After so many years of not knowing myself, it is so important to me now to stay on the move. At the time, I had rarely stepped outside of Smallville, and my flight to Star City was so unusual I didn’t know that the state of travelling in itself was purgatory.

I remember when Chloe and I lived together once she spent several days researching quantum physics — to this day I don’t know why. For an article, maybe. When I asked her about it, I thought she seemed to know so much, and yet when I think about it now I suppose she knew all she needed for the article and nothing more: that's all that Chloe ever knows. I knew a little about physics: things I had learned on my astronomy course. But astronomy is about things which are very big, and quantum physics is about things which are very small, and most of what Chloe was researching had no meaning to me.

One thing did stay with me. It was something I’d also overheard mentioned to Clark at Smallville High — because Clark was the kind of person who would try to hide that he was both clever and interested, and who, being Clark, would fool nobody.

(I heard he got better at disguising himself when he was older.)

That one thing was Shrödinger’s cat, superposed in its state of alive and dead.

Sometimes when I’m travelling, I feel a little like that: neither in Star City, nor in Gotham, in both places but nowhere all at once. That’s what I mean by purgatory. Until I arrive, I won't know if I'm alive or dead. There is a strange sense of detachment about it, where thoughts drift in through the pores in your skin and you have a feeling of objectivity. I didn't have this on my journey with what would later become the Justice League. But on this journey, on this flight, I thought of Lex.

For the first time I felt far enough from my marriage to look at it with an even hand. At first I had swung, like a pendulum, from blaming myself to absolving myself, back and forth, back and forth. When I realised that I play the victim, I forgot that sometimes I am the victim. And I was the victim in that marriage. I passed information on him, yes, because I had to. I married him when I didn't love him because I was forced. And you know, after what Lex had did to me, I have no sympathy for the fact that he was also deceived. It felt, feels, like a necessary evil.

Clark would disagree that there is such a thing. But Clark is Clark, and I no longer have to pretend to be the Lana he wanted.

And it was the baby, the baby that was never a baby — I didn't know whether to grieve, or what to do.

I had to come around to it, and the stability I thought that Lex offered me, inside wanting to leave him and be with Clark and resenting the baby for chaining me to him. But I thought I could have the baby and have something in my life that was my own, and when I married Lex that was the only hope I had left for our union. When I miscarried I blamed myself for my earlier resentment, and Lex allowed me to do that. And when I found out I was never pregnant, I didn't know what to do. My guilt and grief didn't evaporate: it stagnated in my veins and became twisted insights into who I thought I was, what I thought I should do. And I don't think I could ever forgive Lex for that, whether I thought he deserved it or not.

I don't think he deserves forgiveness from anyone, but Clark would give it, because Clark is Clark. Gotham, like Star City and Metropolis, is beautiful in its own way. It is beautiful like a deadly nightshade, with a powerful poison at its core. When I arrived there I didn't know how long I would stay, just that I would know when I wanted to leave, just as I had known in Star City. It's the same now: always there's the possibility that I may never want to leave, and yet, in the end, I always do. If Gotham taught me one thing, it was the importance of self-defense. Going to classes brought back painful memories of training with Lex, but I couldn't rely anymore on Clark or Oliver coming to my rescue, and nobody in Gotham wanted to rely on the Batman.

I took photographs of the landmarks, and of the people who flocked to tourist attractions. I would sit in coffee shops and watch those people, normal people, living the life I never had and trying to understand how they did it. It occured to me that nobody who had ever lived in Smallville could know what that felt like: whether we had admitted their existance, we were all touched by the meteor infected, and by Clark — whether we knew it, our lives had been struck off course by the meteors and sent spiralling, spinning, out of control.

Or maybe that was the illusion. Maybe I wanted to believe you could have a normal life, that I could have a normal life. Can I? I still don't know. Maybe nobody can. The one thing I did realise was that my life depended on me now. For once. It was my story. That thought made me smile.

And then one day Green Arrow came to town.

I was sitting in a bar, in the corner of the room, just watching the people there. Gotham life wasn't exactly normal, I realised; it was the tourists who seemed to live most averagely. But there was something about life in this city of opposites — of fantastic wealth and carelessness, of poverty and crime — something about the people which fascinated me. But the television caught my eye, reporting live from the scene where some petty criminals had had a run-in with my old protector. I don't know why I did it, but I did anyway. I grabbed my bag. It was three blocks away.

And of course I had a run-in of my own on the way there.

It's a strange thing: sometimes you know what to do, and your body won't do it. I remember, as he grabbed me, pinned my arms to my sides and grabbed at my bag, thinking that Lois could have got herself out of this one. Why was I thinking about Lois? This was so senseless. I was so angry. I tensed my stomach and pulled my leg up to my chest. Then I kicked back. I felt him flinch and tried to wrest my arms from his grip, but as soon as his fingers had loosened they were taut again, bruising. I cried out. Then I fell back against nothing. My assailant hit the wall with a sickening thud and slid down against it. My rescuer turned to me.

Not Green Arrow, but Oliver Queen. He seemed as surprised to see me as I was to see him there. I doubled over to catch my breath. Inside, underneath everything in me, I felt somehow angry that I had needed him.

"Lana," he bent over and grabbed my shoulders, "are you okay?" Then there were flashing lights down the alley, police cars tracking back from the earlier scuffle. He grabbed my hand, "They'll find him," he said, dragging me up, "come on." I stumbled and fell against him, and we ran out and around the corner.

He let me catch my breath then, leaning against the wall with my eyes closed and my hair a mess. "Are you okay?" I heard him repeat, and nodded. "I'm sorry."

"You saved me," I said, "don't apologise." And I meant it.

"Come on," he said, taking my hand again, gentle, "I'll buy you a drink — does your arm hurt?" I rolled up my sleeve and examined the red marks on my arm. They didn't hurt, but they were ugly. What hurt was my pride. I didn't understand how sometimes I could be so strong, and so able to defend myself, and at other times how I could be so weak and become so victimised. I didn't begrudge Oliver the help, but I didn't want to have needed it. I shook my head.

"Okay," he said. He pulled gently on my hand this time and took me into a bar a little further along the street. We sat down at a table in a corner, and he rubbed my back. He thought I was in shock. Maybe I was. I breathed out suddenly and closed my eyes, smiling. "Thank you," I said, "for helping me out back there." I don't know if I meant the attack, or Smallville, or what I was talking about. When I opened my eyes he was nodding.

"I'll get you a drink," he said.

When he left I wrapped my arms around myself and just shuddered, leaning back in my seat. After everything I've been through you would think that attack would be trivial. But it doesn't work like that. It was all cumulative. It all came together. It was then that I realised I hadn't spoken to Oliver since that phone call. I looked up as he set a drink down in front of me and met his gaze. He gave me a reassuring half-smile; he thinks I'm his responsibility. I didn't want to be someone's responsibility anymore.

"How have you been?" he said. "I didn't know you were in Gotham."

"I've been good," I said. I paused, "What are you doing here?"

He seemed to suppress a laugh, and then smiled at me. "I came to see a bat about a boy's club."

I nodded. "How are AC and Victor?" I asked, "...and Bart?"

"Bart's okay," he said, leaning back and looking me in the eye, "I took him back to Smallville recently."

I nodded. I didn't need to ask why. I bit my lip, and then said "Did you see Lois?" Oliver gave a dry quirk of the lip, almost a smile, and ran his finger around his glass.

"Yeah," he said, nodding, "I saw her."

"How is she?"

"Oh she's fine," he said. I couldn't totally understand what he had coded into that reply, but I thought maybe Lois was getting close to someone who wasn't Oliver. Part of me wanted to smile: that was the trouble with breaking up with people "for their sake". I knew that just as well as Clark.

"And..." I pursed my lips, and looked resolutely into my own glass.

"Clark's also fine," said Oliver. I nodded. "He still won't join us," he said, putting his glass down and stretching out in his seat.

"I think," I said, almost surprised at the comprehension I was able to muster, "that Clark will have to make the journey from hero to superhero on his own."

Oliver nodded. "Well he has friends," he said. There was a moment of silence. My understanding of Clark came from my understanding of myself: of course it came too late for us. I closed my eyes.

"He'll never ask for help," I said, "he's too proud." When I opened my eyes again Oliver was watching me. I was reminded forcefully of the way he had looked at me on that day, mid-flight from Smallville to Star City, when we were on uneven footing and he was only trying to help.

"I wanted to... apologise," he said after a moment, watching my reaction, "For what I said to you when you called." He paused to purse his lips, and then said, "You kind of... touched a nerve, and I didn't think about what I was saying." He nodded, more to himself. "It won't happen again." I had a moment of insight there, of understanding. Oliver was all emotions kept under control. He was cool on the outside: on the inside, he was a thousand exploding stars. That control had frightened me, back when I was the girl running away from Smallville. And it took incredible strength: I could see it now.

I wanted him to lose control. And that was surprising.

I looked away. "It..." I pressed my lips together. "I needed to hear it... so don't apologise."

He tilted his head to one side and appraised me, his jaw clenched. "You've changed," he said after a moment. I had thought it, and wondered. It was frightening, there, in that room, with a vertiginous moment of not knowing — am I changing, or is the scenery just rushing past me, the context around me changing all the time? How could I know? How could anybody?

But Oliver was there, and he knew: he had known me before, and he knew me now, and he was telling me: you are different. But how well had he known me anyway?

"I hope so," I said.

His lips twitched, a smile around his mouth and not his eyes, "I know how that feels." I caught my breath, and looked him in the eye. He looked away, and I knew what it was: he had given too much away. I couldn't feel bad about it.

"I'd better go," he said, pushing his chair out and standing. I felt a stab in my heart: I didn't want him to leave, and I didn't know it until that moment — and I didn't know how to make him stay.

"Oliver —" I said, the breath rushing out of my lungs. He turned back to me, his eyebrows raised, his body taut like an animal making ready to run. I just looked up at him like there was no oxygen in the air. How did I get like this? Then I grabbed his hand in a single motion, and I kissed him.

I missed. I was kissing the corner of his mouth. And as we stood there, I felt his eyelashes brush my cheek as he closed his eyes. Then he was pushing me back, and holding me by the shoulders, and looking at me with his face expressionless: under control. "Why did you do that?" he asked.

Even now, I don't know why. He had rescued me twice, and I hadn't wanted it, and yet I had kissed him. I pursed my lips, and looked down, searching myself. Then I shook my head, slowly, and said "I don't know."

"Lana," he said, now concerned, gripping my shoulders.

"No," I said, "don't," I breathed in, my chest expanding, "don't be like Clark — don't decide what's best for me." I paused. "And don't," I said, as he seemed to process this, "decide what's best for yourself and pretend you think it's best for me."

"I can't," he said. I saw his chest rise and fall, "No, Lana, I can't." I nodded. I think this was the first time somebody other than Clark had rejected me, and I wasn't sure if I was disappointed because I really wanted him, or because I just wanted his approval and he wouldn't give it to me — but Oliver was at least honest, and I was okay with that.

"You have to save the world," I said. "That's... that's okay." My god, what had I stopped Clark from doing?

He looked at me for a moment, and then nodded, "Yeah," he said, "yeah, but," he paused. "Lana, I'm proud of you."

So patronising. I shook my head and looked up smiling, wry.

"I'll see you soon," he said. "Stay safe."

I understood. Because we went to so much effort to make you safe: stay that way.

**Author's Note:**

> Come say hi on [twitter](http://twitter.com/theoceanblooms) or [tumblr](http://spectroscopes.tumblr.com)!


End file.
